Following back-to-back defeats in the Premier League, it’s clear that Chelsea have had a pretty poor start to the season. And today I wanted to take a look at Enzo Maresca’s record at the club and get to the bottom of whether it’s the manager’s fault or something else is to blame.
Maresca’s Premier League record to date
In terms of overall success, Maresca still has a very decent record at Chelsea. Since he joined them, the Stamford Bridge club have been the fourth best club in the Premier League. Which is no easy achievement. When we take a look at Maresca’s record in the league, we can see that his points-per-game average is better than his predecessors Mauricio Pochettino’s and Graham Potter. However, as we can also see, Maresca is still somewhat behind Thomas Tuchel and Maurzio Sarri. And his average is 18% less than what Antonio Conte achieved at the club. So in a very real sense, Maresca has been a notable improvement on Potter and Pochettino. But still hasn’t reached the heights of Tuchel, Sarri and Conte. But while at this moment in time there’s plenty to critique about his tactics, in-game substitutions or even the discipline of his side, I think there is a bigger issue at the club holding him and his team back.
Chelsea’s peculiar transfer policy
My issue is with Chelsea’s current transfer policy under the club’s relatively new owners. We all know that Chelsea have spent an obscene amount of money on new players and made an equally impressive amount of money on selling players this year. But my issue is with the club’s policy of selling key first team players just because a decent offer came along. As we can see in the graph, four of Maresca’s eight best players for non-penalty goals and assists last season left the club this summer. And while very few Chelsea fans will be gutted about losing Jadon Sancho, I think there are genuine concerns about the club moving on players like Nicolas Jackson, Noni Madueke and even Christopher Nkunku.
The club have tried to replace those players with younger stars who could have the potential to be better, but at this moment in time is Maresca’s team actually better now that they’ve replaced Jackson, Madueke and Nkunku with Liam Delap, Alejandro Garnacho and Jamie Gittens? Even if we take a look at the club’s biggest sales under Todd Boehly & Co, we can see that many of the players the club have sold since 2022 would probably still make it into Maresca’s best XI this season.
Perhaps the better question is whether Chelsea’s current owners even have any intention of letting Maresca build a squad around these young players and help them develop into top talents. Or will they also be sold if huge offers come in for them in the future? In the past, Chelsea sold young academy players to bring in established first team players. But this new ownership group seems to be selling established first team players to bring in more young players. And while we certainly can’t say for certain whether any of this will work, it’s clearly had a huge impact on Maresca’s squad in the short term. And severely limited his ability to build on what his team achieved last season.
Maresca essentially took Chelsea to the top four and won a European trophy last season, but is the club even interested in going further than that? It’s really hard to say at this moment in time and that’s perhaps why the club’s poor start to the season isn’t entirely down to their manager.
